A children's story written in 1976 by Astrid Lindgren, one of Sweden's best-known authors, about high tax rates reducing its hero to beggary, is sometimes credited to contributing to the downfall of the Swedish government in that year and tax cuts thereafter. Her ongoing concern with animal welfare, also fictionalized in her literary work, was instrumental in passing a new law in 1988 controlling factory farming, which put Sweden among the most progressive countries on this issue.